Sharps containers for used hypodermic needles are well known. It is normal practice in hospitals, for example, to provide disposal boxes to receive different types of medical refuse for disposal. One special class of items for disposal is commonly referred to as "Sharps" and includes items such as used hypodermic needles, or broken glass phials or pharmaceutical containers. After use these articles may be potentially very dangerous, if not unsanitary or unhygenic. Some of the articles may, for example, be coated with blood or contaminated in other ways. Other objects may still carry quantities of drugs and in addition there is the physical danger of injury to hands or fingers from the presence of sharp points or edges. Attempts have been made to provide disposal containers for such items but existing containers for the purpose suffer from various disadvantages and it is an object of this present invention to provide an improved container which will meet some of the requirements and satisfy some of the present problems.
Commercially available sharps containers used in hospitals and laboratories to guard against accidental use of used needles typically utilize devices which cause the needle to be broken off at the end of a syringe or act as a receptacle for the needle assembly or sometimes a receptacle for both the needle and syringe. Currently available Sharps containers are gravity dependent in that the disposed item is dropped or inserted into the container and falls to the bottom of the container. In a space environment and the absence of gravity there are some problems in introducing and retaining a disposable item in presently available Sharps containers. Plastic containers also present an off-gassing and flammability problem.
Some representative off the shelf Sharps containers include the following.
1. The Becton Dickinson "Destruclip One" which is basically a plastic box with a cutting mechanism in the lid. The waste container and lid are made of homopolymer polypropylene and are autoclavable. The cutting mechanism works through a hinged blade that is connected to one of the clipping handles. After the handles have been squeezed together, a spring attached to the blade pulls the handles open and back into their original position. The plastic construction does not protect against off-gassing products. Secondly, the openings in the device must be closed in order to prevent fragments of material from exiting the container and finally the container requires gravity for the needles to fall into the container. The device also requires use of two hands, one to hold the needle assembly and the other to squeeze the cutting handles.
There are instances when it is preferable to dispose of the entire needle assembly without having to remove the needle, recap it or in any way use more than one hand to operate the sharp.
2. Other sharps containers are simply large cups with locking lids or hinged lids where the operator simply drops the needle assembly into the container through an opening in the lid that can be locked when the unit is full. These kinds of devices are gravity dependent and may not safely contain the sharps as described above.
3. Still other sharps containers have lids which have a flexible fabric or plastic cover with slits such that the sharp can pass through the slits in the lid but will not be able to back out. These lids are unsuitable because needles can pierce the cover instead of passing through. The lid cover also can be deformed in usage so that the slits lose their elasticity and will not properly close the opening. These types of containers typically also have large volumes and are gravity dependent.